Five Guys fries fiasco gets greasy

John Brown III didn't exactly receive a valentine from Five Guys when he complained to the popular burger chain Feb. 14 about a missing order of fries.

Instead, the Worcester man was shocked when he was mistakenly copied on an internal company email that referred to him as a "douche" and several other bad words.

Not since a Worcester monsignor accidently copied a gay buyer while rejecting his bid on a diocesan property have we seen such an embarrassing email etiquette lapse, as Five Guys scrambles to make amends.

It all started on the aforementioned holiday. Brown, 45, works at Meditech in Framingham, and most Fridays he and his co-workers share a hankering for burgers and fries. They even have a name for themselves — FGOF, or Five Guys on Fridays. The group typically places and pays for its order online, and someone goes and collects the food. On this day, however, Brown's order of regular fries was missing from the bag, which contained only his colleague's order of Cajun fries.

"I like Cajun fries, but I didn't want them on that particular day," Brown explained, adding, "But this is not about an order of fries."

So Brown wrote what he considered a polite letter of complaint to the Framingham store, suggesting that orders be placed in separate bags to avoid confusion. In response, he received an emailed apology and a notice that he'd be receiving a gift card from the store.

But Brown didn't want the gift card, because it can't be used online. So he basically said thanks but no thanks, and indicated that other mistakes had been made in the past and the FGOF may look elsewhere for their Friday afternoon repast.

At this point, apparently, Five Guys had had its fill of Brown. In an internal email, a manager blasted the customer with a word that begins with F, and let's note that it doesn't stand for Five Guys.

"This is from the guy about the online order screw-up. This guy is a perfect example of why this world is (bad word). What a complete (bad word). I'm speechless over this douche. All of this over missing fries. (Bad word) him and his tool office mates."

The email was mistakenly forwarded to Brown, who was stunned.

"I was like, 'Wow,' " he recalled. "Someone made a big mistake here."

Someone surely did. And it's not the first time, either. In 2012, the Catholic Diocese of Worcester found itself in hot water after rejecting a bid by two gay men seeking to buy a mansion in Northbridge owned by the church. The diocese claimed the deal fell through because of financing, but an email mistakenly copied to the men revealed the bishop wasn't comfortable "because of the potentiality of gay marriages" on the property.

Those men are suing. In the Five Guys case, the manager's email was tweeted, and retweeted, until someone at Five Guys realized the chain had a public relations nightmare on its plate and again reached out to Brown.

This time, he was offered a group lunch and some gift cards. Brown is willing to accept, but wants something else thrown in: How about some gift cards for the Wounded Warrior project in Boston?

"I figured, why not make this a win for everybody?" Brown said.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for Five Guys corporate headquarters in Virginia said the company regrets the incident and is working with Brown.

"We don't condone poor customer service and we value our customers," Molly Catalano said. "We're taking all appropriate action to make sure this doesn't happen in the future. ... And we're formalizing plans with the customer to make sure he feels comfortable."

Brown said he'll recover, but in the meantime issued a timely reminder to folks who cork off online.